Standards

Concepts

Introduction

Teachers tell you to do homework, but hey, why should you work now? Aren't you going to spend the rest of your life working? In this lesson you will lean something about education or training that may encourage you to take your school work seriously. You will find out how education and training are related to the amount of money people earn on their jobs.

Task List

You will collect data from workers, analyze the data, and make a conclusion about the data.

Process

You probably know that the Productive Resources are natural resources, human resources, and capital resources. All those combined help to produce the goods and services that we want. Consumers are the buyers of the goods and services and producers are the sellers of those goods and services.

What you may not know is that workers "sell" their labor and employers "buy" that labor. Employers are willing to pay higher wages and salaries to employees that are the best workers.

The interactive activity describes situations in which you assume that you are an employer. In each case you must decide which person you would be willing to pay a higher wage.

Teachers, like employers, are paying students different amounts based on how much students produce and the quality of that work. How do teachers pay students? By giving them grades. The better the work, the higher the grade. You can invest in your future right now by getting the highest grades that you can.

Now that we know that people earn income by exchanging their human resources for wages, let's find out how they can earn a better income.

Let's take a job like a meteorologist (reports on weather) and see what one guy has to say about his job.go to the USA Today website and look at the article called "Stanley Czyzyk, Hurricane Hunter " and read the last two answers in the interview. The last two questions are: (1) What advice would you give someone who wanted to enter this field? (2) What advice would you give someone who was trying to attain his or her dream job? Then read the information in the blue box and answer these questions:

Now read one more site. This time just read the purple box. Go to the USA Today website and look at the article "Mike Costache, Investment Banker " and answer the following questions. You might need to know that $70K means $70,000 and $100K means $100,000.

About how much would an investment banker make after getting a Masters degree?

Based on these three sites, what can you conclude about training and education and their affect on salaries?

What job would you like to have?

What can you do right now to make yourself valuable to your future employer?

Conclusion

In this lesson, you have learned that people earn income by exchanging their human resources for wages. You have been shown that people’s wages are higher as their education or training increases because, with more education or training, they are likely to be of greater value to the employer.